LIABILITY OF

INTERNET SERVICE
PROVIDER
Raudhah Mazman
A146450

QUESTION 4

Millennium Network v .
2) Leaking of
Britney
Spearss latest
album
1) Defamatory
news of Prince
Nazri with Siti
Nurhalina

3)Naked
pictures of
Hollywoods
actress

Issues

DEFAMATORY NEWS
OF PRINCE NAZRI
AND SITI NURHALINA

 Libel is when such words are expressed in a permanent form which is usually visible to
the eye, like in a book, e-mail or picture.Slander is when such words are expressed in a
temporary form, usually when spoken or made by body movements
In civil cases of defamation, when a private person sues another private person for
defamation, the Defamation Act 1957 is applicable.
In criminal cases of defamation, when the state prosecutes a private person for
defamation, Section 499 to Section 502 of the Penal Code is applicable.

Millennium Network v Prince Nazri

Definition of defamation :
- An expression of words that degrades another person 's reputation in the eyes of
society Chris Reed and John Angel , Computer Law 4th Edition.
In this case , Joe had:

A) received information of alleged affair between Prince Nazri dan Siti Nurhalina
from an outsider, without investigating the truth of this allegation.
B) He, then spread this news via email to his friends.

Question : How far is the liability of Millennium Network is this matter?

Stratton Oakmont Inc. v Prodigy

Services Co
In October 1994, an unidentified user of Prodigy's Money Talk
bulletin board created a post which claimed that Stratton
Oakmont, Inc., a Long Island securities investment banking firm,
and its president Danny Porush, committed criminal and fraudulent
acts in connection with the initial public offering of stock of
Solomon-Page, Ltd. Stratton Oakmont sued Prodigy and the
unidentified poster for defamation.

ARGUMENTS
PLAINTIFS :
The plaintiffs argued that Prodigy should be considered a publisher of the defamatory
material and were therefore liable for the postings under the common-law definition of
defamation.

DEFENDANTS:
Prodigy asked to be dismissed from the case on the grounds that they could not be held
liable for the content of postings created by its users, relying on a 1991 case Cubby, Inc.
v. CompuServe Inc., which had found CompuServe, an online service provider, not liable
as a publisher for user-generated content

JUDGEMENT
The court held that Prodigy was liable as the publisher of the content created by its
users because it exercised editorial control over the messages on their bulletin boards in
three ways: 1) by posting Content Guidelines for users, 2) by enforcing those guidelines
with "Board Leaders", and 3) by utilizing screening software designed to remove
offensive language.
The court's general argument for holding Prodigy liable, in the face of the CompuServe
case, was that "Prodigy's conscious choice, to gain the benefits of editorial control, has
opened it up to a greater liability to CompuServe and other computer networks that
make no such choice.

Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc.

CompuServe, an Internet service provider, hosted an online news forum, the contents
of which were generated by a contractor. Cameron Communications, Inc. agreed to
"manage, review, create, delete, edit, and otherwise control the contents" of certain
forums. Cameron Communications then subcontracted the production of Rumorville
USA, a daily newsletter.
In April 1990, Rumorville published defamatory content about a competing online
newsletter developed by Blanchard and Cubby, Inc. CompuServe did not dispute the
defamatory nature of the content. However, no evidence presented during the trial
demonstrated that CompuServe knew, or should have known, of the existence of the
defamatory content.

ARGUMENTS
Plaintifs:
Cubby alleged that CompuServe was the publisher of the defamatory statements. A
"publisher," in the context of defamation law, is one who publishes or otherwise republishes
content. According to federal law and in agreement with New York state law, a publisher
who repeats or republishes defamatory content has the same liability as the original
publisher of the content.
Defendants :
. CompuServe maintained that it was merely a distributor of the published statements.
Distributors of defamatory content can only be held liable if they knew, or had reason to
know, of the defamatory nature of the content.The court held that "CompuServe has no
more editorial control over such a publication [as Rumorville] than does a public library,
book store, or newsstand, and it would be no more feasible for CompuServe to examine
every publication it carries for potentially defamatory statements than it would be for any
other distributor to do so"

JUDGEMENTS
The court found that, CompuServe did not have the opportunity to review the content
of the publication before it was uploaded into its computer banks. Compuserve
products , was an electronic library for profit carrying a vast numbers of publications,
with CompuServe exercising little or no editorial control over publication content.
Therefore CompuServe could not be held liable for posting that alleged defamatory
statement .

 These two cases , CompuServe and Prodigy indicate that where there is a moderated
discussion group online, there is potential liability-for the moderator, the online services
carrying the discussion group, or both.

 Does the Millenium Network has the power to exercise editorial control (delete, amend,
save) for all information uploaded to its service and in the forum?
-If yes, Millenium Network is liable to Prince Nazri dan Siti Nurhalina, following the
principle in Prodigy.
-If no, Millenium Network is not liable for defamatory content of alleged affair between
Prince Nazri dan Siti Nurhalina, following the principle in CompuServe.

LEAKING OF BRITNEY
SPEARSS HEY
CRAZY BOY

BITLAW
A party is guilty of copyright infringement if they violate one of the exclusive rights given to copyright
owners under the Copyright Act Included in those rights are the right to prevent others from reproducing
(or copying) a work, publicly displaying a work, or distributing a work. It is clear that on-line service
providers will be liable for copyright infringement if they are directly involved in the copying of protected
material. For example, if a service provider were to place an electronic copy of the latest best-selling
novel (or a pirated copy of Microsoft Word) on their bulletin board or web site, they would be guilty of
copyright infringement. In these circumstances, an ISP is no different than any other party.
However, Internet Service Providers can be found liable for copyright infringement even where they are
not directly engaged in the copying of protected materials. For instance, ISPs are responsible for
equipment, such as a computer operating as a server, that is capable of making copies without any
direct involvement of any person. Consequently, one relevant question is: "when is an ISP liable under
copyright law for the copies made by its equipment?" As one example, the newsgroup servers controlled
by ISPs make thousands of copies of newsgroup files everyday. Although some of these files undoubtedly
contain copyrighted materials, no ISP has yet to be found guilty of copyright infringement merely for the
unknown, autonomous action of their newsgroup servers.

Categories of liability :
1) Direct liability
-The Internet Service Provider had made a direct violation of copyright towards any
party.
Direct infringement : direct infringement would be if the ISP were to knowingly host
copyrighted material and received a direct financial benefit from it.

Categories of liability:
Shift liability :
It is different from direct liability, in such that in dependant liability, the ISP had not
made a direct violation, but ISP has provided devices such as gadget, which are able
to make copies without involving any individual.

Kazaa BV v Vereniging Buma &

Stiching Sterma Amsterdam
In this case the judgment of the court has decided that the system software used by
Kazaz can be used to exchange data files and judiciary , in the meantime the offense
of infringement of Copyright information and data does not require the intervention of
the Kazaa alone. Therefore,Kazaa can not be convicted until he proved to have
caused the software to do things that have been said to lead to a breach of the
Copyright of data and information exchange

Categories of liability
Contributory liability :
-Internet Service Providers can be liable of copyright infrightment if they causes or
drives copyright infrightment

- Such is that, the ISP have knowledge of the infringement but did not do any such
action to block or stop these violations from happening , they will be liable of copyright
infrightment.

SEGA ENT V MAPHIA

A federal judge has held that the defendant, a BBS operator, was distributing pirated
versions of Sega videogames. The BBS was apparently established specifically to permit
the uploading and downloading of videogames. Unlike Netcom, AOL or other ISPs,
which have thousands (and in some cases millions) of users, and which cannot monitor
the activities of all of the users to insure that they are not engaging in infringing
activities, the defendant knew what its approximately 400 users were doing, and what
they were paying their monthly fee for.
The defendant claimed that such copying was a fair use because it was for home use
only. The court held that since the defendant had not uploaded or downloaded the
software, it could not be liable for direct infringement. However, the court ruled that
since the defendant knew of the infringing activities and substantially participated in
them by inducing, causing or materially contributing to the infringing conduct, the
defendant was liable for contributory infringement.

Religious Technology Centre v Netcom OnLine Communication Services Inc.

in this case the plaintiff, who is a representative of the church has taken action against
a defendant who was said to spread a copy of the work that has been created by L
Ron Hubbaard in a newspaper . The defendant in this case is an ISP company to the
newspaper's website
In his judgment, the court has ruled that the defendant is not liable because the
defendant was not the only party that has contributed to the dissemination of the
results of the work behind it is the press is.

ALS Scan, Inc. v. RemarQ

Communities
In ALS Scan, Inc. v. RemarQ Communities, Inc.the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
considered whether an ISP is eligible for protection when it is alerted to infringing
activity by imperfect notice that does not strictly comply with the notification
procedures specified in 512(c)(3). ALS Scan holds the copyrights to over 10,000
adult photographs which were posted on newsgroups that were operated by the
service provider RemarQ Communities. Upon discovering that RemarQs servers
contained infringing material, ALS Scan sent a cease and desist letter to RemarQ,
requesting deletion of two specific newsgroups that contained the photographs.
However, the district court in ALS Scan found that the notice was fatally defective in
complying with 512(c)(3) because ALS Scan never provided RemarQ with a
representative list of the infringing photographs. Nor did it identify the pornographic
photographs with sufficient detail to enable RemarQ to locate and disable access to
them.

 In this case, Joe is a registered user , hence he is under the liability of Millenium
Network, thus the liability is on Millenium Network for issues on copyright infrigment.
Since there is thousands or millions registered users, it is impossible for Millenium Network
to filter all the activities of this users. Nevertheless, if the ISP can control the activities of
this users but fail to do so, ISP is liable for copyright infrighment. Besides that, if they had
found out about this leaking album matter, they should have removed it from
service,as soon as possible.
Even if, Millenium Network is not directly involved , need to prove that they could be
liable if they knew about copyright infringement committed by users of their services .
The knowledge of the infrightment is important .

OBSCENE
MATERIALS

 ISPs are potentially liable for any unlawful material that might be hosted on their
systems and posted by third-parties. Pornographic material posted on websites or chat
forums is no exception to the various forms of unlawful material.
ISPs are exempt from liability if they play a passive role in the transmission of such
pornography. Similarly, ISPs must also contact the originator of the communication and
prevent access, since they are the conduits or off-ramp to the end user. Thus liability is
couched in the fact that an ISP is either an innocent disseminator or just merely
distributing, but with the knowledge of the content thereof.

It would be appropriate to interpose that for anyone who knowingly creates,

distributes, produces, imports or is in possession of child pornography, liability ought to
attach

 The ISP is also at risk of being held liable for the offence of publication of obscene
material, if it hosts a website displaying such material. ISP acting as a host, charging a
subscription fee, giving access to the material is committing the offence.
A question here arises that if a clients webpage which is hosted on its server contains
obscene material, can the ISP be held liable ?

PLAYBOY ENTERPRISE V FRENA

Defendant George Frena operated a subscription computer bulletin board service,
Techs Warehouse BBS (BBS). Photographs copyrighted by Plaintiff Playboy
Entertainment, Inc.'s (PEI) were uploaded onto BBS without permission. Subscribers of
BBS were allowed to browse and download the photographs in high quality
computerized images which were then stored on the subscribers home computer.
One hundred and seventy of the images that were available on BBS were copies of
photographs taken from PEI's copyrighted materials.
Defendant Frena claimed to never have uploaded any of PEI's photographs onto BBS
and that subscribers to BBS uploaded the photographs. Defendant Frena states that as
soon as he was served with a summons and made aware of this matter, he removed
the photographs and has since that time monitored BBS to prevent additional
photographs of PEI from being uploaded.

JUDGEMENT
Public distribution of a copyrighted work is a right reserved to the copyright owner, and
seizure of that right constitutes infringement. The Court held that PEI's right to distribute
copies to the public was violated by Defendant Frena. Exclusive rights in copyrighted
works[6] grants PEI the exclusive rights to sell, give away, rent or lend any material
embodiment of his work.
In addressing Defendant Fernas argument that he did not make the unauthorized
copies but that subscribers to BBS uploaded the photographs, the Court ruled that it
did not matter that Frena was not the originator of the authorized copies. Ferna
supplied a product containing unauthorized copies. Therefore he violated PEIs
exclusive rights.